Fine fiction selection in current NYer by Lauren Groff

It takes a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, but if you buy in and go along w/ the plot Lauren Groff's story in current NYer (so-called double issue, go figure)is moving and provocative. In essence the story, Beneath the Wave, tells of a family of three swept up by either a tsunami or tidal wave while on vacation, not too far from their home, in an unnamed country: We can't help but think of Thailand, but there are no particular clues to indicate that. In a harrowing second the woman sees her husband swept away and when she emerges half-conscious in a shelter both husband and daughter are missing. She befriends a young child, and the 2 of them eventually leave the shelter and make their way back to the woman's home where she begins a new life, shaving the child's hair and raising the child as a boy. It's almost impossible for me to believe that, in any culture, the woman could get away with this; surely people would know her husband drowned and that the child she's raising is not hers. That said, Groff does a great job giving us a sense of the tenuous hold this woman (I don't think she's ever named) on her reality and on her life, and she builds the story to a heart-breaking moment when someone spots the child and thinks she's/he's her lost niece. It's impossible to know exactly what the child thinks, but she brushes off this inquiry - whether because she truly does not know this woman or her previous life was unhappy or she's so traumatized that she holds on to what she does have. The story opens a lot of questions about family, ethics, and trauma; perhaps it's part of a longer, developing work, though it stands well on its own and, if Groff is to follow these characters further she''s set in motion a strong and mysterious plot.